When business failures occur, the companies involved often offer explanations. They reveal the misstep or breakdown in a process that caused the problem, citing insufficient research into potential outcomes, lack of preparation due to faulty projections, outdated training, or other scenarios. It is also not unusual for companies to couple explanations with announcements about changes that will be implemented to ensure the failure is not repeated.
While explanations like these are important, they aren’t the best tool for regaining customer trust. To increase the likelihood that customers will stay loyal in the wake of a failure, companies should offer an apology as part of their explanation. An explanation shows that a company knows it did something wrong, while an apology indicates that it cares about the people who were affected.
But apologies must be done right. A botched apology becomes a new failure the company must manage. It pours gasoline on the fire caused by the original failure, spreading its impact by attracting more attention.
To get an apology right and leave the failure behind, companies should consider taking these steps.
Step 1: Take responsibility
Blame shifting is an all-too-common response to a corporate failure. This approach, which seeks to acknowledge a problem while avoiding responsibility, has come to be known as a non-apology apology, empty apology, or fauxpology. If you have heard someone say, “I’m sorry my behavior made you feel offended,” you’ve listened to a fauxpology.
This type of apology is popular in the business world because it cushions corporations from litigation that could result from an admission of guilt or responsibility. But it doesn’t protect companies from losing their customers’ trust. By denying remorse for its actions, a company delivering a non-apology apology essentially says the problem is with the customer’s perception and not with the company’s actions.
Rather than shifting the blame to the customer or some other entity, corporations that want to excel at apologizing must take responsibility. If the failure occurred on your watch, it’s apparent that you played a role in it. You may have hired the wrong people, cut the wrong corners, or valued the short term over the long term. Whatever you did, acknowledge what it was and apologize for the trouble it caused.
Step 2: Show empathy
A strong apology will move beyond presenting what was done to express care and understanding of its impact. That is where empathy comes in. To reassure customers in the aftermath of a failure, companies should recognize the feelings of those affected and the challenges they may be facing.
A situation that emerged with Google’s Gemini chatbot in early 2024 provides a case study on the value of empathy in corporate apologies. The apology was prompted by reports of inaccurate images generated by the AI tool, which some critics felt could end up “erasing a real history of race and gender discrimination.”
While Google acknowledged that some images were “inaccurate or even offensive,” it stopped short of conceding that the errors may have caused pain and confusion or been disrespectful to some users. The only place the word “sorry” appeared in the apology was when Google said it was “sorry the feature didn’t work well.”
Step 3: Be transparent
When a failure occurs that affects customers, those customers want details. Companies that are transparent about what happened and how they will respond moving forward help those who might have been affected and those who are afraid of being affected in the future. Full transparency also prevents a company from allowing rumors and speculation to drive the public narrative that follows a failure.
When some Boar’s Head deli meat led to a multistate listeria outbreak in August 2024, the company issued an apology, prioritizing transparency. Acting “in the spirit of complete transparency,” Boar’s Head provided the public with a link to the US Department of Agriculture Notice of Suspension that it received as a result of failed inspections. Boar’s Head also informed its customers that it was indefinitely closing the location related to the outbreak and permanently discontinuing the product involved.
Step 4: Offer solutions
To play a role in regaining trust, an apology must outline the specific actions the company will take to address the failure and prevent it from happening in the future. This is the step that allows companies to show not only remorse but also repentance. By offering solutions, companies affirm what they have stated in the first three steps: that they are responsible, understand the impact, and want their customers to be in the know.
The July 2024 Crowdstrike failure had massive repercussions for the company’s customers and the millions of consumers those customers serve. Crowdstrike was called before the US Congress in September to explain its failure. As part of its testimony, it mapped out a plan to prevent a future failure that included new validation checks, enhanced testing, and additional controls customers can use to manage updates to their systems. Crowdstrike’s solutions offer users the peace of mind of knowing that the company’s problems have been identified and acknowledged and are being addressed.
Apologies fail when they attempt to dismiss a failure by devaluing customer concerns. By acknowledging the problem, taking responsibility, and offering solutions that speak to the pain the problem caused, companies provide apologies that have the potential to restore trust.
Thomas Mustac is a Senior Publicist & Crisis Communications Expert at Otter PR.
